We have taken Washington, DC. Our allies, freds, have captured a Jena Bush and her female cognate; freds will utilize the captives genetic material to correct a recent mutation problem. We have taken over the brains of your leaders.

You would do well to surrender your planet. We will be merciful if you do.

FOURTEEN LITTLE PIGS CLONED IN ITALY, October 28 Italian scientist Cesare Galli has succeeded in cloning 14 piglets following earlier successes with a bull and a horse, the Ansa news agency said Friday. Full story at http://www.physorg.com/news7661.html

ASTHMATIC CATS MAY BE ALLERGIC TO PEOPLE, October 27 Cats have long been blamed for causing human health problems, but now Scottish veterinarians say they've found humans can cause asthma attacks in cats. Full story at http://www.physorg.com/news7654.html

I suppose cats only get asthma from humans who have uncooperative attitudes.

I've been assigned as loader for the 175mm Quaker cannons, Battery B, Firebase Alferd Packer. My job is to make sure that there is sufficent ammunition for the gunners and to make sure that they are loaded all the time.

Sereant Major Minor informs me that Colonel Suh has, with consent of General Panneck, decided that the Legion will remain at their posts and fight off the coming Martian Attack. Already the torpedo tubes have been loaded and real ammunition has been issued to those thought capable of handling it.

Colonel Suh has also noted that as soon as the Martians are defeated she will issue orders to "ride like the wind" for Upstate New York to "capture, hogtie, and bring to justice the entity which calls itself M (for Martian) Mario" on charges of barretry, flotsam, feme sole, petit treason, grand mal, indecent disclosure, and aiding and abetting. "Capture him, hang him, and convict him," her order reads. "Be like John Wayne toilet paper and don't take no shit off nobody."

Even if they are too far off to get here on Saturday I hope they'll at least wave. I'll head out to the driveway to set up my nice big telescope and take a peek. Tell them to wave in the general direction of Texas, MMario, if you're in touch with them. They won't be able to see my house because I'll turn off the porch light to use the telescope.

NOW you've done it, MMario! But we'll have to deal with you later, I guess, if the Martians are going to attack tomorrow.

I'm going out now to tell the Legion about the Martians and MMar...wait a minute! "Mario" is a perfectly good name, but that additional "M" -- could it be for "Martian"? "Martian Mario" would make sense!

The Legion will decide whether or not to ride immediately against Martian Mario or stay here and defend our beloved turf against the Martian invaders and THEN ride against Martian Mario.

I thought that it would be sporting to tell you that since your planet, which you call "Urth," and my planet, which you call "Marz," will be far closer tomorrow than usual, we'll be coming over to visit.

Well, specifically, we'll be coming over to hunt down all of you and take your planet for our own. Yes, yes, it has all that water and oxygen, but we can deal with pollution issues.

Thought that if you were forewarned the hunting might be more interesting.

Mom is NOT to go down to the end of list if she don't go down with me (or someone else). It would be too, too easy for her to go wandering all about, quite of her own accord and frankly, we can't afford a thirty shillings reward no matter WHAT King John, the Queen, and the Prince say.

YEs, but I was trying to maintain a civilized posture, not wantonly scattering unwanted phraseology about like some folks are wont to do.

Meanwhile we may be in trouble:

WALKING MOLECULES. A single molecule has been made to walk on two legs. Ludwig Bartels and his colleagues at the University of California at Riverside, guided by theorist Talat Rahman of Kansas State University, created a molecule---called 9,10-dithioanthracene (DTA)---with two "feet" configured in such a way that only one foot at a time can rest on the substrate. Activated by heat or the nudge of a scanning tunneling microscope tip, DTA will pull up one foot, put down the other, and thus walk in a straight line across a flat surface. The planted foot not only supplies support but also keeps the body of the molecule from veering or stumbling off course. In tests on a standard copper surface, such as the kind used to manufacture microchips, the molecule has taken 10,000 steps without faltering. According to Bartels (ludwig.bartels@ucr.edu, 951-827-2041), possible uses of an atomic-sized walker include guidance of molecular motion for molecule-based information storage or even computation. DTA moves along a straight line as if placed onto railroad tracks without the need to fabricate any nano-tracks; the naturally occurring copper surface is sufficient. The researchers now aim at developing a DTA-based molecule that can convert thermal energy into directed motion like a molecular-sized ratchet. (Kwon et al., Physical Review Letters, upcoming article; text at www.aip.org/physnews/select; see movie at www.chem.ucr.edu/groups/bartels/)

That's not too bad. You should have seen the one a group of my freinds wrote, when they were all living together. Someone would write a few pages, or maybe a short chapter, and pass it round. The end result is quite impressive. It came out at the end of a long evening, and guessing whos's is is who's was a great game. Mix and match Mills and Boone isn't a bad idea either, in the right circumstances, such as after beer.

. . .although I don't actually ever recall Lawrence saying "Bingo" in his novels. He wrote things like

Constance sat down with her back to a young pine-tree, that wayed against her with curious life, elastic, and powerful, rising up. The erect, alive thing, with its top in the sun! And she watched the daffodils turn golden, in a burst of sun that was warm on her hands and lap. Even she caught the faint, tarry scent of the flowers. And then, being so still and alone, she seemed to bet into the current of her own proper destiny. She had been fastened by a rope, and jagging and snarring like a boat at its moorings; now she was loose and adrift.

"She saw him striding across the GOD-forsaken beach in the dappling sunset light as though he owned the whole island, which, in fact, he did. Despite his worn trousers and broken sandals, he carried himself as a royal scion might while visiting his holdings which in fact he was, with a look of intelligent and superior tranquility. His bronzed skin barely hid the muscles rippling beneath, and his gray eyes had a distant, cloud-borne look that spoke of hours racing before the winds of the Spanish Main, which in fact he had.

Her interested inventory of his attributes was suddenly interrupted by a strange sensation: her gorge had climbed into her throat, and she could feel her breakfast rising along her pale, high cheeks and suffusing her lovely features with a grassy (and gassy) green. Never, in all her eighteen years, had she felt such a sensation; she stood still, overcome with a mixture of emotion and physical desire to reverse parestalsis that seemed to have a mind of its own....."

Have you read any D.H. Lawrence? One could argue that the overblown prose isn't just the domain of serial romance novels (though some would argue that Lawrence wrote just such novels himself).

So many women have "inchoate" eyes. But men also.

Any presence but that of the nurses was a strain and an effort to him now. Every morning Gerald went into the room, hoping to find his father passed away at last. Yet always he saw the same transparent face, the same dread dark hair on the waxen forehead, and the awful, inchoate dark eyes, which seemed to be decomposing into formless darkness, having only a tiny grain of vision within them.

And always, as the dark, inchoate eyes turned to him, there passed through Gerald's bowels a burning stroke of revolt, that seemed to resound through his whole being, threatening to break his mind with its clangour, and making him mad.

Chapter 24, Women In Love.

Or from chapter six, same book:

'You see he MADE me go and live with him, when I didn't want to,' she replied. 'He came and cried to me, tears, you never saw so many, saying HE COULDN'T bear it unless I went back to him. And he wouldn't go away, he would have stayed for ever. He made me go back. Then every time he behaves in this fashion. And now I'm going to have a baby, he wants to give me a hundred pounds and send me into the country, so that he would never see me nor hear of me again. But I'm not going to do it, after -- '

A queer look came over Gerald's face.

'Are you going to have a child?' he asked incredulous. It seemed, to look at her, impossible, she was so young and so far in spirit from any child-bearing.

She looked full into his face, and her dark, inchoate eyes had now a furtive look, and a look of a knowledge of evil, dark and indomitable. A flame ran secretly to his heart.

'Yes,' she said. 'Isn't it beastly?'

'Don't you want it?' he asked.

'I don't,' she replied emphatically.

'But -- ' he said, 'how long have you known?'

'Ten weeks,' she said.

All the time she kept her dark, inchoate eyes full upon him. He remained silent, thinking. Then, switching off and becoming cold, he asked, in a voice full of considerate kindness:

'Is there anything we can eat here? Is there anything you would like?'

'Yes,' she said, 'I should adore some oysters.'

'All right,' he said. 'We'll have oysters.' And he beckoned to the waiter.

"She saw him striding across the forsaken beach in the dappling sunset light as though he owned the whole island; despite his worn trousers and broken sandals, he carried himself as a royal scion might while visiting his holdings, with a look of intelligent and superior tranquility. His bronzed skin barely hid the muscles rippling beneath them, and his gray eyes had a distant, cloud-borne look that spoke of hours racing before the winds of the Spanish Main.

Her interested inventory of his attributes was suddenly interrupted by a strange sensation; her heart had climbed into her throat, and she could feel a flush rising along her pale, high cheeks and suffusing her lovelyy features. Never, in all her eighteen years, had she felt such a sensation; she stood still, overcome with a mixture of emotion and physical desire that seemed to have amind of its own....."

I dabbled with the idea years ago when I was starting out as a writer. Use a nom de plume to preserve my good name for the serious stuff. There are some decent authors who got their starts in those romance series, but they usually move on away from the series and their books take on more substance. The trouble with writing for a series like those is that you have to be able to stand reading most of their current stories to get the style and content down, and most of them are pretty darned stupid.

Mebbe we oughta talk Steve Ballmer into starting a charity foundation called "Chex for Chix" which would pay her not to write any more books and to sniff out similar paeans of feminine mediocrity and pay their authors not to do anything with them. Drive yon Harlequin and suchlike right out of business.

When I was a member of the Vietnam Veterans of America, I got a newsletter which included reviews of books about the Vietnam war. One book so reviewed was "Nam" by Danielle Steel.

I wish I had the review, but it went something like "I receive many books about the War, some good and some bad, but never has one reached such depths of badness as this one.... Apparently the author learned a few words and phrases, such as 'AK-47 and 'fragging' and has built a book around them.... I was glad to finish it...." and so on.

The review couldn't have made the author happy, but I suspect that as long as she got the checks she didn't care.

Isn't the quote ( by some German poet, not sure which one) " Where one burns books, one will evenually burn people"

However, if you're burning books for entertainment, not dogma, it should probably be altered slightly to " Where one burns books, one will eventually have a hog roast", which frankly sounds a much better idea.

Well, mostly I want to tweak some of the more rabid intellectual freedom types.

Now, I donated some stuff to the auction the Idaho Library Association recently held -- pairs of the "original" and the "deluxe" library action figurine from Archie McPhee, held together with a genuine rubber band that had been used in a genuine library, and each figurine personally autographed by Nancy Pearl herself. Seven sets, $90 per set, and the money going to a good cause.

I think there are a number of books that would do well to be burned, but it is against my principles to suhhest it!

Here's some good news:

THE CAR THAT MAKES ITS OWN FUEL, October 24 A unique system that can produce Hydrogen inside a car using common metals such as Magnesium and Aluminum was developed by an Israeli company. The system solves all of the obstacles associated with the manufacturing, transporting and storing of hydrogen to be used in cars. When it becomes commercial in a few years time, the system will be incorporated into cars that will cost about the same as existing conventional cars to run, and will be completely emission free. Full story at http://www.physorg.com/news7499.html

No, I was being flip. And after thinking about it for about 20 seconds, I conclude that the appropriate sign for this thread is Taurus. I was thinking of a ram when I first posted, but came up with the name Sagittarius instead of Aries (see how much time I spend reading the horridscopes). Head butting, voraciously devouring any topic (a goat-like appetite). About 10 seconds into that 20 seconds (isn't Google fast!) I realized it should have been Aries, or maybe Capricorn, whatever the heck a "sea-goat" is. Is that supposed to be "she-goat"? Anyway, appetite aside, the end result is pure unadulterated BS, so it must be Taurus.

Now, where was I? Storage? I haven't suffered any slings and arrows (eros, either, darnit!) regarding the stuff in my garage, but there is too much of it. So I'll be doing a garage sale one of these days. I have to fix the weedwhacker first. It needs a new starter cord. That's probably my high dollar item in the sale, so I want it in working order. Can't get anything for broken stuff--even BS won't rescue you from that one.